Beautiful Nightmare
by SparklingLetters
Summary: Henry wakes in his NYC home one night to the sound of knocking on glass coming from an old mirror stowed away in the corner of his room. On the other side of the mirror, Henry discovers an Evil Queen very unlike the one in the fairytales. The two strike up a curious friendship that grows fast and begins to change Henry's life - before it turns his world upside down…


Maybe it was all the pizza he had eaten before bed. Maybe it was level 23 of Heroes and Villains, which he had been trying so hard - and failed again - to beat. Or maybe it was something else, something that had seemed perfectly innocent at the time.

Henry woke in the black of night to the sound of knocking on glass.

Pretty sure it was just a dream, he turned on his other side and huddled under the blanket, shutting his eyes tight to go back to sleep.

_Knock-knock-knock_.

Henry's eyes flew open. They lived on the third floor. People didn't just come and knock on your window on the third floor.

For a moment he fought the urge to jump out of bed and run to Ma's bedroom, to crawl between the sheets and cuddle up to her the way he used to do when he was younger and afraid. He kicked off the blanket and sat up.

The knocking had stopped.

Henry stood up and, anxious not to lose heart halfway, he practically ran to the window. He threw the curtains aside and stared out.

There was nothing but night out there: darkness illuminated by streetlamps and signs, and pale starlight that couldn't compete with all the artificial brightness of New York City.

Henry shuffled back to bed. He must have dreamed it after all.

As soon as he climbed back under the blanket, there it was again, just like before, no louder but persistent.

_Knock-knock-knock._

He sprang back out, checked the window again, but still he found nothing out of the ordinary. Bemused, he scratched his head and looked around. His eyes fell on the mirror stowed away in the far left corner. Ma had bought it at a recent flee market spree on some strange whim, but it didn't seem to fit anywhere in the apartment, so for now it just stood in the corner of Henry's room covered by an old rug.

And now someone was knocking on glass, and it wasn't coming from the window.

Henry approached the mirror and pulled the rug off.

Nothing happened. The smooth surface shimmered in the streetlight, reflecting his room in strangely skewed shapes. Henry grinned at the momentary sense of disappointment - what had he been expecting?

He examined the mirror, running his fingers over the ornate frame. It was beautiful but completely out of place – it belonged in one of those snobbish antiquity-filled places. Then, without thinking, he brushed his knuckles against the cold glass, and next moment he gave in to an inexplicable urge.

_Knock-knock-knock_.

Startled by his own actions, Henry stepped back. He half-expected a response – a _knock-knock-knock_ like the ones that had woken him - but none came. Ready to turn away, he caught some movement from the corner of his eye.

A shadow shifted in the golden frame. Henry glanced over his shoulder for the actual source of the changing reflection. The lamps shone on, undisturbed, like before. Whatever was going on seemed to be happening in the mirror only, not the world outside.

Ropes of black and grey coiled and uncoiled, then dissolved into swirling snakes of smoke. Henry held his breath. The smoke began to clear, and blurred shapes were coming into view. He tried to make them out but couldn't just yet: a streak of red in a sea of black. But the mist was melting away, and the edges were growing sharper.

A face stared back at him.

Henry backed away in fright, bumping into the bed and landing on the mattress. He blinked several times – maybe the image would go away. It didn't.

A woman was looking back at him from the mirror, raven-haired and black-clad with red inlays, staring wide-eyed and clearly distraught. She reached towards the image – towards him - and for a wild moment Henry thought she might actually reach through the mirror, and he felt a rush of panic. Then she withdrew her hand rapidly, as if she were scared to touch it all of the sudden.

But her eyes were still fixed on him, and they glistened strangely.

"H- Henry?" she stuttered, in a voice so quiet he could barely hear.

Henry's mind had gone blank for a moment. He could not have said how all of this was making him feel.

"What trick is this?" he managed, clutching the sheets of the bed – those were familiar, those were real, and safe.

For a good while, she said nothing. She even seemed to have trouble breathing. Her eyes glistened more with every second, and she never took them off his face.

"It's magic, Henry," she breathed at last. "But - I don't know how…" She ran her fingers along the frame, careful not to touch the glass. Henry wondered whether the image would fade away if she did. Maybe she didn't know either but didn't want to risk it.

Henry's mind finally seemed to catch on, and he frowned. "How do you know my name? There's no such thing as magic."

Her face changed at that, and she swallowed.

"Well…" she said slowly with a crooked smile, "if there's no such thing as magic, I cannot possibly answer."

How _did_ she know his name? Now she was sort of breathing normally again but talking seemed hard. What was this all about? One thing was certain – she didn't seem like a threat.

Henry was no longer afraid.

"Why are you here?" he asked. Now that he knew she wasn't dangerous, a million questions flooded his mind all at once.

The woman shook her head. "I don't know."

She fell silent again, and he thought that was all she was gonna say, when she made a step forward and her eyes bore into his with even more intensity.

"I wanted to see you again so badly," she blurted, "to know that you're well…

Then she tore her eyes away from his face for the first time, and looked down instead with her cheeks flushed.

"But I- I don't know how this happened," she muttered.

All Henry could think about was the strange feeling that she looked like someone he had seen before.

"I don't know you," he said. "Who are you?"

Her head snapped back to look at him, then quickly away again, as if the sight were hurting her.

"I'm yo-" she began, then clapped a hand over her mouth in alarm. All colour had left her cheeks, and she looked very pale now, almost like someone about to be sick. Her eyes were unfocused, and she took a deep breath before she looked at him again.

"I'm Regina," she said heavily. Her eyes went hollow. "The…Evil Queen," she finished with huge effort. A tear rolled down her cheek, and more followed.

Henry watched with amazement as she just stood there looking at him and let the tears fall, not even trying to stop them. He felt an urge to put a stop to them himself.

"You don't look very evil right now," he said.

She tried to brave a smile, and even brushed some of the tears away. When she sorted herself out a little, Henry felt a sense of relief, but a second later her face grew serious again. Henry fidgeted under her intense look.

"Henry," she said urgently, "are you happy?"

"What?" It was such a strange thing to ask. People didn't ask him stuff like that, definitely not strangers. So why did she – Regina - look as if her life depended on his answer?

"Are you happy?" she repeated, almost pleading.

Henry didn't want to lie, so he took a moment to think – he had never really thought about it like this before. He had Ma, and they were a family together, and they had fun together and they loved each other. They had a couple of friends, too, and a good life, really.

"Yeah…I guess I am," he said, "I'm not complaining."

A blissful smile lit up her face, although tears started trickling down her cheeks again.

"Let me look at you a little longer," she said, drinking him in. "Please, don't be afraid."

He wasn't. He was just baffled. While her eyes slid over his features with some strange but completely non-threatening hunger, Henry moved to the mirror and began to look at her more closely, too.

Her eyes were a deep brown and seemed to say a thousand words, and her dark lashes were heavy with tears. Her lips curled softly - he imagined a lullaby would be more likely to come out of that mouth than anything harsh. Her hair was in an updo but a strand had fallen loose. Ma liked to tell him now and again about how he had been fascinated with grabbing her hair as a baby. He wondered why Regina's hair made him think of that. Probably because the loose strand was so conveniently positioned, and looked so soft. It was a strange thing to think though, anyway.

Henry's eyes wandered behind the collar of Regina's gown, and he tried to make out the details of the background. It was mostly dark, and mostly green.

"Where are you?" he asked.

It took a moment for her to snap back to reality. Then she looked around, as if she needed to check to make sure.

"The Enchanted Forest," she sighed.

The name rang a bell, but it was a weird kind of bell.

"Like a fairytale?"

It was starting to make sense. He'd been leafing through a book of fairytales the previous night. Not that he would read them – he was far too old for that - but he'd thought he might have left a bookmark in there, and he'd been right. It had been right there in the Snow White story, between yellowed pages, marking a big picture of the Evil Queen.

And now he was talking to the Evil Queen in Fairy Tale Land through a magic mirror in his bedroom.

"Is this a dream? It is, isn't it?" It had to be, or else he was going crazy. But a part of him wished it weren't, and that just made things worse.

Regina swallowed. She looked conflicted. Strange that they should both be feeling that way. For a split second, she looked almost hopeful – her eyes seemed to smile. Then her face fell, and she closed her eyes; her eyelashes shone with tears. When she opened them again, there were no more tears – just sorrow.

"Yes, Henry," she nodded. "It's just a dream." She tilted her head slightly and the look she gave him almost felt like a caress as she said: "Go back to bed, sweetheart…"

Her voice broke on the last word. He hesitated. He wasn't sure after all that he wanted to wake up from this dream just yet.

"Go. Please…"

And Henry turned away, surprised by how hard it was, and shuffled back to bed. He didn't think he could look at the mirror again, so he climbed under the blanket and shut his eyes tight.

Was she still watching, or was she gone?

A faint sob came from the corner.

Henry opened his eyes just enough to squint at the mirror.

The Enchanted Forest was gone, and all he saw was the distorted reflection of the window frame with his old stuffed panda sitting on it.

* * *

While getting dressed for school, Henry kept mulling over every detail of the strange dream of the night before.

It had only been a dream. Of course it had, what else could it have been? Even Regina – he couldn't think of her as some Evil Queen after how he had seen her in the mirror – had told him so.

Henry grinned: a dream was a dream because someone he'd dreamed of had told him so? He was being ridiculous.

But it had felt so _real_.

It was something about her, something in the way she looked at him, the way she'd said his name. _I wanted to see you again so badly… Are you happy?_ She had looked really moved and caring, almost like an old friend, or more. And she had said "again" – as if they had met before.

Henry ran his hand over the mirror. It stood there blind and lifeless, cold to the touch.

He went to retrieve the book of last evening, but turned on his heel at the door. It was ridiculous. He was too big to believe in stuff like fairytales or Santa or magic anymore. He returned to his room and, shaking his head at the hint of hesitation he felt, he threw the old rug back over the mirror.

It was just a slate of glass glazed with a thin layer of silver - nothing more.

Regina had been just a product of his mind – nothing more.

But if everything had been a dream, how had the rug gotten from over the mirror in the evening to the floor in the morning?

* * *

That night at almost exactly the same time as the previous one, Henry woke up and listened - but there was no knocking. He stared at the ceiling for what felt like hours before finally going back to sleep.

Three nights in a row he found himself waking at exactly the same time, haunted by the memory of the dream.

The fourth night, he couldn't sleep at all. When the hour approached at which he had first heard the knocking, Henry got out of bed. He didn't have a plan, but something seemed to be leading him all the same. Inches from the looking glass, he pulled the rug off and knocked three times.

_Knock-knock-knock_.

He could barely wait for the smoke to finally clear, and he never realised how much he had hoped for this to succeed until he saw her face again on the other side.

"Henry!" she gasped, and for a moment he felt hurt at the thought she might not have wanted him. There was shock written all over her face, and relief, and joy, and then she whitened and looked around, until her eyes fell on her raised hand, and she eyed it with suspicion and a hint of guilt.

"Were you gonna knock?" Henry asked. A whole lot depended on her answer, even though he didn't quite understand why.

"I…I don't know," she muttered. "Maybe."

"I just wanted to see you again," Henry shrugged, anxious for her reaction.

Her face lit up and suddenly she was glowing with happiness.

"Oh, Henry… I wanted to see you, too!"

And Henry felt his apprehension melt away.

He sat down in front of the mirror and showered her with questions about her and about Fairy Tale Land, only to be showered with dozens of questions in return.

* * *

The following night, he knocked again, and they talked again – and the night after that, and the one after that, too. Gradually, they fell into a pattern where he'd be the one to knock first one night, and she'd be the one to knock first the other.

One night they'd been talking for hours when she stopped abruptly and squinted at something behind him.

"What time is it?" she asked.

Henry glanced at the alarm clock on the bedside table. It was 01:08 AM.

"Time flies when you're having fun," he shrugged at her horrified expression.

"You should be sleeping," she frowned. "Isn't it a school night?"

"Do you have that kind of thing in Fairytale Land?" If so, fairytale world sucked.

"No," she admitted and sighed. "I don't want you to flunk school, ok?"

"I won't," he grinned. "I've got straight As." Her face glowed with pride. "But you're my friend. I like talking to you."

Her features softened and her eyes shimmered in the soft light.

"And you're my little prince," she said with a tender, somewhat apprehensive smile. He chuckled, and her face lit up.

But still she wouldn't waver – even though her voice was soft and kind, it left no room for compromise: "Now, go to sleep, little prince."

* * *

The pile of books on his bed grew by the second, and Henry still wasn't done pillaging the bookshelves.

Apparently, magic was a real thing in fairytale world, and Henry was in the middle of a series of books about a young wizard boy that he had borrowed from Avery. There had been many a chuckle when he asked Regina about how magic worked compared to those books, and there was something ridiculous for her to refute. Like wands: you didn't need wands to do magic, which Henry thought was much cooler. Much to Henry's disappointment, Quidditch wasn't real, either – how cool would that be? Cool – when that word came up in reference to magic, that was usually when Regina would grow serious and say something about how it always came with a price and it wasn't the solution to all problems.

There was so much Regina had already told him about the Enchanted Forest, but he wanted to know more. Suddenly, he didn't feel too old for fairytales anymore. To her, they were real. So he had plunged into his old fairytale books, and enjoyed them more than ever.

Strangely, Regina seemed to know his favourite parts before he even told her. Whenever he marvelled how that was possible, she would just smile enigmatically and her eyes would glaze over with emotion at some distant memory.

But such moments never lasted long, and soon she only had eyes and ears for him again. Henry had realised in the meantime what had baffled him so much from the start about Regina – it was the way she looked at him. The way he would sometimes catch Ma looking at him.

Everything about this strange friendship was wonderful.

* * *

Then everything went wrong one day.

As soon as she appeared in the mirror, Henry knew something bad was happening, because Regina's face was all white and her eyes looked puffy.

"Henry," she spoke before he had the chance to, the words tumbling out of her mouth with haste, "we cannot do this anymore. I must be strong. This…" her voice hitched, and she continued after a deep breath, "this has to stop."

"What do you mean? I don't want it to stop." He didn't understand. Why would it have to stop? Who would make it stop? As far as he was concerned, no one even knew.

"I don't want it, either," Regina said, and her lip quivered, "but it's for the be-"

He didn't want to hear how it was all for the best, because it wasn't. How could it be, when it was making him feel so frustrated, so…miserable?

"I thought you were my friend!" he shouted. "And now you're gonna abandon me just like that!"

"Henry!" she exclaimed with horror, and her pain was so obvious he almost felt sorry for flipping out like that. Her tearful voice wasn't making things any better. "No, don't say that! I lo- I care about you," she finished urgently. "That's why I have to do this. I don't want to, but it's for your own good."

"I don't believe you." Adults were so ridiculous sometimes. None of this was good, he wasn't feeling remotely well at all. He only felt betrayed. "Are you tired of me?" The idea was quite horrible, but it made sense. "There's plenty of more interesting stuff in your land than an ordinary boy like me, right?"

"No!" she cried out, shocked.

She was telling the truth. Relief flooded him, but it didn't last long.

"Henry, please. I… I love you." Her voice was no more than a whisper now. "I'm sorry."

"Then don't go."

"But I have to," she sputtered. "Look what I'm doing to you. I didn't want this for you. All I ever want is for you to be happy. You're happy with Emma, right?"

He didn't even care how she knew Ma's name.

"Yes, but now I like spending time with you, too."

Her face relaxed into a smile. "Me, too," she said, and Henry smiled back at her, feeling hopeful again. Then her face tensed again, and she swallowed before she continued. "But it can't last. Henry. I'm putting you in danger and I could never do that."

"Just one more time, then. Please."

He could see her pain and longing, and it gave him hope that she'd give in to his pleading. If she gave in once, she might give in another time, and another, and eventually, she might just stick around.

Unfortunately, she seemed to have reached the same conclusion.

"I can't," she shook her head, and her eyes were brimming with tears. Henry didn't care, he was too busy keeping himself tearless. "I couldn't. If we do this again, I'm afraid I won't be strong enough to ever stop. Please," she whispered desperately, "I need you to understand."

"But I don't!"

"I know… Henry…" Slowly, very slowly, with her eyes wet with tears and fixed on his face, her hand inched towards the image. "Just know that I love you."

A sob broke out from her and tears shook her petite figure, but she did it all the same – she touched the surface of the mirror on the other side, and a cloud of smoke bounded in from the edges and covered her all up.

"No! You're not my friend!" Henry yelled, his eyes burning with anger. "A friend wouldn't leave me! I hate you!" He burst in tears, hot and bitter, and kept pounding the golden frame with his fists until he had no more energy left.

* * *

For days he would wait in front of the mirror, hoping she'd come back.

He knocked and knocked, listening for a response, a sigh, or a sob. He knocked and knocked, and talked to her as if she were there even though she wasn't. He knocked and knocked, by night and by day, hoping to find her again.

She never came.

"I love you, too," he whispered into the mirror's blind, lifeless depths.

* * *

One afternoon Henry returned from school and the mirror wasn't there.

"Ma, where's the mirror from my room?" he blurted first thing as her keys clinked in the lock.

"Oh, that old thing?" Ma said. "I figured since it had been lying around for ages and we never had any use for it, I sold it. Guess what," she winked at him, "I got us dinner. Your favourite."

Henry stared at the pizza box in Ma's hands without taking it in. The mirror was gone. What would he do now?

Ma set the box down and turned his face up carefully to make him look at her. "Henry, I'm sorry, were you attached to it?"

Henry swallowed.

"No. No, I wasn't. It was just a mirror. Nothing special."

Just a bunch of dreams. His wild imagination – though he hadn't even had much of that before - fooling him.

Only a mirror, and only dreams.

Nightmares. But beautiful. But only dreams.

Maybe if he could make himself believe that, it would hurt less.


End file.
